Day three: Las Cruces to Tucson, AZ

Day three - June 12, 2013

Las Cruces - Tucson
Temp: 105-113 degrees based on an over heated car going up the sides of hills.
Pool temp: 89 degrees
 Mileage: 300
Time from hotel to Mike Kalina’s -9 hours

 

Border Patrol Stop

Sooo uneventful.  I wanted them to look in the car and question what we were doing and where we were going but this is what happened.

Agent: “Are you American citizens?” 

Brian: “Yes, sir” 
Agent:”Have a good day”
Brian: “Thank you sir”

The Thing



As with any good marketing plan The Thing was advertised 200+ miles from the destination.  “THE THING!  What is it???”.  Spoiler Alert: For the uninitiated The Thing is a mummy..  You walk thru old cars and carriages, drift wood smoothed and painted to look like animals, and other ‘this is the only one like this in the whole world’ objects.  Basically, on exit 322 on I-10 in AZ it is a glorified gas station with a DQ attached for food. 

 

Texas Canyon

This is found in the Dragoon Mountains (like lagoon, not dragon).  Huge boulders that called out to Sullivan to climb. A pit stop later we learned that alas, the AZ govt doesn’t want mere mortals to scale those rocks and have their own 127 Hour movie.  The rocks were cordoned off by a fence.  Brian kept saying it was ‘offensive’ that we couldn’t climb.  Get it?  O-fence-ive. A few miles down the road we saw a castle off to the north near Benson.  (That is the same area our van had a flat on Christmas morning in 2002.  We were on our way from Tucson to Denver.  On Star was not helpful in getting us a new tire at 5am.)

 

Saguaro East National Park

 (Admission $10, total $22 at Natl Parks) – This is more of a driving park.  But there are parking areas all over for short to long hikes.  We stopped at Javelina Rocks.  Big big boulders.  As an aside: we packed tennis shoes for Sullivan but he isn’t wearing them as ‘it takes a million years to put on’.  So he has been wearing his water shoes everywhere.  He wore them while on these boulders.  He climbed up like a little billy goat.  Seth, wearing his tennis shoes,  had a harder time getting up. But he did.  And I didn’t look as my people were as high up as they were.  But, funny thing, I felt more like I SHOULD be nervous for their safety versus actually being nervous.  They survived the climb down.  They wanted to be there longer, with no sun screen, in 108 degrees at noon.  We said no.

San Xavier Mission

 

The Mission was built in the 1700s and has been a working mission since then.  There are new repairs going on now. But the inside is still very much intact to a reno that happened in the last 1800s. It was surprisingly cool inside. Seth bought his first souvenir from there, a hat.  There are native Americans outside making all sorts of food in big vats and over hot stoves.  We didn’t want to risk a Hepatitis incident so we didn’t buy any. 

 

Snake Bridge

 A bridge that looks like a snake.  All boys walked across it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“A” Mountain  

 

This is a mountain in Tucson.  It has an “A” on it shaped out of thousands of carryable boulders.  It was made in 1917 by University of Arizona students and it is usually painted white.  Sometimes it is green (St Patrick's Day) or red/white/blue (4^th of July).  The billy goats known as our childen climbed up and down this too.  We could see San Xavier Mission and all across Tucson.  The tiniest houses are at the base of this mountain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pool/Mike’s House

We snuck into Mike Kalina’s backyard and jumped into a frigid 89 degree pool.  We swam for an hour before Mike got home and we were able to clean up inside.  The Radomsky’s and Dave Juneman came over for dinner.